Heinrich Ferdinand Möller (1745-1798) is known as a German actor and theatre director. Just like Christian Gottlob Neefe and Gustav Friedrich Großmann, he was a member of the troupe of Abel Seyler in the 1770s that performed several times during the year 1778 in Cologne and Bonn. When Seyler’s troupe dissolved in 1779, Neefe went to Bonn and Möller to the margrave’s court at Braunschweig-Schwedt. Little else is known about the rest of his life, only that he was in Nuremberg from 1792 and died 1798 during a journey.

Although it has been essentially unknown until now, Möller seems to have had several connections to the electoral court in Bonn. In Maximilian Franz’s estate in Vienna (HHStA Wien) Möller appears several times:

1. The first of the documents concerning theatre and music is titled as “Singspiel von Möller” and is an undated libretto.
2. The estate further contains a proposal of Möller, which includes a draft list of recommendations on how to run a court theatre – but that will be discussed in detail in the next blog entry.
3. In the document that follows that proposal, Maximilian Franz cancels some kind of employment status with Möller. Unfortunately, there is no date.
4. When the contract with Steiger and Reicha, directors of the court theatre from 1789, ends in 1794, the troupe of Schmitz in Koblenz offers their service, suggesting Möller as the new director. But the drafted contract would never come to fruition.
5. Finally: Before the end of Steiger’s and Reicha’s contract, it seemed already clear that the court would not continue to run the theatre in the future. In December 1793, the treasurer of the court receives a directive not to extend the contracts until summer 1794, but to cancel them already in March, some weeks before Easter. Möller is mentioned in a document that lists theatre personnel that should be paid up to Easter, and which includes names of prospective theatre members in Bonn while Schmitz’s troupe would perform (see 4.).

It cannot be said for sure which kind of connections Möller had with Bonn, the electoral court and the theatre there, or what his employment status was, but at least it can be said that there had been one.